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Criterion April Releases (US - DVD R1 | BD RA)

Criterion announces Naked Lunch, Repo Man, and more for April...

Criterion has announced their releases for the month of April. Each film will be available on both DVD and Blu-ray. The Eclipse Series 38 set will only be available on DVD.

Richard III

Quote: Release Date: 9 April 2013 SRP: $39.95

Synopsis: With Richard III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier brings Shakespeare’s masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to mesmerizing cinematic life. Olivier is diabolically captivating as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through a set of murderous machinations, steals the crown from his brother Edward. The supporting cast—including Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, and Claire Bloom—is just as impressive. Filmed in VistaVision and Technicolor, Richard III is one of the most visually inspired of all big-screen Bard adaptations.

Disc Features -New high-definition digital master of the Film Foundation’s 2012 restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition -Audio commentary by playwright and stage director Russell Lees and John Wilders, former governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company -Interview with actor Laurence Olivier from a 1966 episode of the BBC series Great Acting, hosted by theater critic Kenneth Tynan -Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production stills and posters, accompanied by excerpts from Olivier’s autobiography, On Acting -Twelve-minute television trailer featuring footage of Olivier, producer Alexander Korda, and other cast and crew from the film -Trailer -A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Amy Taubin in the Blu-ray edition

Gate of Hell

Quote: Release Date: 9 April 2013 SRP: $29.95

Synopsis: A winner of Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and best costume design, Gate of Hell is a visually sumptuous, psychologically penetrating work from Teinosuke Kinugasa. In the midst of epic, violent intrigue in twelfth-century Japan, an imperial warrior falls for a lady-in-waiting; even after he discovers she is married, he goes to extreme lengths to win her love. Kinugasa’s film is an unforgettable, tragic story of obsession and unrequited passion that was an early triumph of color cinematography in Japan.

Naked Lunch

Quote: Release Date: 9 April 2013 SRP: $39.95

Synopsis: In this adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s hallucinatory, once-thought unfilmable novel Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg, a part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict named Bill Lee (Robocop’s Peter Weller) plunges into the nightmarish Interzone, a netherworld of sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. Alternately humorous and grotesque—and always surreal—the film mingles aspects of Burroughs’s novel with incidents from the writer’s own life, resulting in an evocative paranoid fantasy and a self-reflexive investigation into the mysteries of the creative process.

Disc Features -High-definition digital transfer, approved by director David Cronenberg, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack -Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg and actor Peter Weller - Naked Making Lunch, a 1992 television documentary by Chris Rodley about the making of the film -Special effects gallery, featuring artwork and photos alongside an essay by Cinefex magazine editor Jody Duncan -Collection of original marketing materials -Audio recording of William S. Burroughs reading from his novel Naked Lunch -Gallery of photos taken by poet Allen Ginsberg of Burroughs -A booklet featuring reprinted pieces by film critic Janet Maslin, director Chris Rodley, critic and novelist Gary Indiana, and Burroughs

Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System

Quote: Release Date: 16 April 2013 SRP: $59.95

Synopsis: One of the most important filmmakers to emerge from Japan’s cinematic golden age, Masaki Kobayashi is best remembered today for his 1959 epic The Human Condition, but that is just one of the blistering films he made in a career dedicated to criticizing his country’s rigid social and political orders. He first found his voice—rebellious, angry, engaged—in the fifties, following his life-altering experiences as a soldier in World War II; the four films collected here, made in the same period as The Human Condition, reflect Kobayashi’s coming into his own as an artist. He fought to get these powerful dramas made at a studio more oriented at the time toward quiet family melodramas; they are unforgettable pictures of a postwar Japan troubled by identity crises and moral corruption on scales both intimate and institutional.

Collector's Set Includes - The Thick-walled Room (1953) - I Will Buy You (1956) - Black River (1957) - The Inheritance (1962)

Repo Man

Quote: Release Date: 16 April 2013 SRP: $39.95

Synopsis: A quintessential cult film of the 1980s, Alex Cox’s singular sci-fi comedy stars the always captivating Harry Dean Stanton as a weathered repo man in desolate downtown Los Angeles, and Emilio Estevez as the nihilistic middle-class punk he takes under his wing. The job becomes more than either of them bargained for when they get involved in reclaiming a mysterious—and otherworldly—Chevy Malibu with a hefty reward attached to it. Featuring the ultimate early-eighties L.A. punk soundtrack, this grungily hilarious odyssey is a politically trenchant take on President Reagan’s domestic and foreign policy.

Pierre Etaix Box Set

Quote: Release Date: 23 April 2013 SRP: $59.95

Synopsis: A French comedy master whose films went unseen for decades as a result of legal tangles, director-actor Pierre Etaix is a treasure the cinematic world has rediscovered and taken up with relish. His work can be placed in the spectrum of classic physical comedy with that of Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis, but it also stands alone. These films, influenced by Etaix’s experiences as a circus acrobat and clown and by the silent film comedies he adored, are elegantly deadpan, but as an on-screen presence, Etaix radiates warmth. This collection includes all of his films, including five features, The Suitor (1962), Yoyo (1965), As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966), Le grand amour (1969), and Land of Milk and Honey (1971)—most of them collaborations with the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière—and three shorts, Rupture (1961), the Oscar-winning Happy Anniversary (1962), and Feeling Good (1966). Not one of these is anything less than a bracing and witty delight.

Disc Features -New digital restorations of all five features and three short films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition -New interview with director Pierre Etaix -New video introductions by Etaix to seven of the films - Pierre Etaix, un destin animé (2010), a portrait of the life and work of the director by his wife, Odile Etaix -New English subtitle translation -A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Cairns